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The Good Life | Fundraising efforts help other autistic young people

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Two years ago, Dominick Staffey was a frustrated 6-year-old — until a gift changed his life.

Dominick has autism, a sensory disorder that varies widely in severity.

In his case, he didn’t speak.

His parents, Randy and Anne Staffey of Lancaster, tried to use pictures to communicate with Dominick, but the system proved unsatisfactory and their son often suffered meltdowns.

“It was very frustrating,” Mrs. Staffey said. “He wasn’t able to tell us what he wanted.”

In August 2011, the family received an iPad courtesy of Michael Collier of Carroll, then a 16-year-old junior at Fairfield Christian Academy.

Collier had organized a benefit golf tournament and raised enough money (about $2,900) to buy four iPads, which he then gave to families with autistic children.

The iPads are equipped with an application called Proloquo2Go. Users can tap a vocabulary of more than 7,000 words, create sentences, then hit a button that reads it aloud.

The device “was a big revelation to us,” Mrs. Staffey said.

“For the first time, (Dominick) could tell us what he knew,” she said. “As soon as we got it, he spelled out his name and then jumped up and down, clapping his hands.”

The anecdote is gratifying to Collier, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. Although Collier never had trouble with speech, he was socially awkward as a child. Years of therapy helped, and he wanted to assist other autistic kids.

The golf tournament began as his Eagle Scout project; Collier organized and ran it. The toughest challenge, he said, was choosing the families to receive the iPads.

He partnered with the Southeastern Ohio Center for Independent Living, which sent him 18 applications.

“You had to read every single story (on the applications),” Collier said. “And when you read a story about someone, you get at least slightly attached to them. And none of them were bad choices.”< /p>

After he fulfilled his Eagle Scout obligation, Collier was still bothered by the ongoing need faced by some families. Last summer, he decided to reprise the golf tournament, turning it into his senior project at Fairfield Christian.

The second “iPads for Autism” tournament raised about $3,400, allowing Collier to donate five iPads. Several of the families he had considered the previous year were among the recipients this time.

“It has been so enjoyable to work with Michael; he’s such a wonderful young man,” said Linda McDonald, the community-outreach coordinator at the independent-living center. “He’s always looking for another person to help.”

No tournament took place this summer, but his mother, Michelle, said a revival is possible in the future.

Michael, 18, graduated from Fairfield Christian in June. The next month, he received a $1,000 scholarship from the Kohl’s department-store chain as part of its Kohl’s Cares program, honoring young people who help their community.

Collier is a freshman at Wright State University near Dayton, where he plans to study biomedical engineering. He wants to develop prosthetics — having learned through his iPad projects, he said, “ that doing good feels good.”

“I want to do as much good as I can for as many people as I can. I’m trying to develop that into my life philosophy.”